WIRELESS CHATS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 233, 2 October 1925, Page 6

WIRELESS CHATS.

. » » AUCKLAND TO ALL THE WORLD ROMANCE OF THE AIR. AN EXPLOSION IN SPANISH. A hundred years ago he would have been burned as a wizard. Sitting in a little room at the top of Symonds Street with an .apparatus clapped over his ears he holds one-sided (as far as the onlooker is concerned) conversations with a voluble gentleman in the Argentine; a curt American working for a firm in Kobe, Japan: an enthusiastic person away up in the north of England on the Tyne. Of course, we knowexactly how it is done, but nevertheless the first time you come into contact with this sort of thing it is uncanny, to say the least of it. New Zealand wireless enthusiasts have made a decided name for themselves owing to the success of their efforts in "getting through" to the other side of the world with ridiculously low power current —about enough to" feed a couple of decent-sized electric light bulbs—and it is no wonder if they are all as keen as Mr. Russell White, who presides over "1Y.A.," to use the official call of this Symonds street wizard's den. In the classical days we read of a man with a wonderful voice, a soldier named Stentor, who shouted across the broad river Danube, and made himself heard on the other side. Hence our word "stentorian." The modern Stentor can sit quietly in a small room in Symonds Street, and in an ordinary conversational tone of voice, can make himself lieaTd across the Seven Seas. And yet they tell us that romance is dead.

Many of us have been through the interesting experience of meeting a party of strangers at some big dinner or conversazione, and felt the mental zest there is in getting to know people who think differently, and talk differently. It is a very different thing from exchanging commonplaces with Brown of our street, or Robinson of a couple of blocks away—fellows whose every turn of conversation is as familiar to' us as the voice of the clothes-props man, or the newspaper boy. People that sit at the end of a wireless plant, with earpieces on have the fascinating choice of the world for their conversazione. Their "Hullo" may pick up this pleasantly garrulus gentleman in the Argentine, who follows up every sentence with a wholly superfluous, but polite "thank you very much." the American exile in an office in Kobe, with his curt phrases and his "Yep," the business-like man from the North of England, who cracks a joke occasionally, or it may be an amateur in little Switzerland.

Searching the Air. Turning a small knob you go questing through space half-way round the globe, and suddenly your voice, your ordinary speaking voice, tliat you use in your own home-circle, gets an answering hail. "Yes, I.C.W. (or some such combination) here," and I.C.W. turns out to be the Argentine man. "How are my signals? Thank you very much. What power are you using. Thank you very much. I can hear you well. Thank you very much." And so on. "Did he ever have any difficulty with the foreigners?" Mr. White was asked. Xo, he had not yet got into touch with any of them who did not speak fairly good English. The Argentine man was a bit slow when he came to a difficult verb or some English idiom, hut they were all wonderfully good, and it showed how universal the language was.

Although the Argentine enthusiast was quite safe in his English, it ' was evidently a bit of an effort to him. One evening he ended up by asking if he would (see Mr. White the following day. "Si, si, manana," answered Mr. White in the only bit of Spanish ho knew. Then there was an explosion. The man in the Argentine let fly a torrent of Spanish under which the Symonds Street operator reeled, and wisely deciding that discretion was the better part of valour quietly hung up the receiver and the stream of beautiful Spanish went west —in fact it went in many directions.

To the outsider one of the oddest things about this talking by wireless is that it annihilates time. You may remember that Charles Lamb in writing to his friend in China has a delightful little bit about the incongruity of talking about things "now happening," between correspondents so widely separated, and points out that his "now"' when it gets to China and is read by his friend would probably be six months old. There is something of the same thing in our own letters, although we have speeded up the mail a little since Lamb's day, but with wireless "now" is now, right round the globe. At the same time it is rather odd if you stop to think that you in Auckland on Monday evening, although the sound of your voice is carried with the speed of Ariel to the man you are talking to in England, at that precise point of time, be is really talking to you on his Sunday morning, so that while you may be going to the theatre after your chat, he will be getting in a proper frame of mind for the morning service at St. Paul's or some other fane. Like the Arrow and the Song. The now thing about wireless is its blatant publicity. Mr. White often gets cards or letters from other people in Xew Zealand and Australia telling I how they had been listening to him ! talking to England, the Continent, or: bis Spanish friend in the Argentine. ' There is nothing private about talking through the ether, so the gossip who ' goes in for the pastime would be well advised to remember that when he ia exchanging confidences with somebody a couple of continents away who wants to know the latest scandal about some of their common friends. It opens up an embarrassing field of possible compilations if the scandalmongers take to wireless, and we can quite easily foresee that there will have to be an amendment of tho law relating to libel. On the other hand this extreme publicity of the whole thing may lead to a real entente among the nation', or at any rate the. wireless part of them. It; is often only ignorance of one another that makes people of d : fferent races so antagonistic to each other. When you can chat and make jokes with a man you cannot feel a stranger to him. no matter whether he be Filipino, Japanese, or Spanish South American. Then think of the thrill of meeting somebody with whom years before you had talked through the air. whose very voice you knew again. It would be like the "Arrow and the Song." You shot your voice into the air, and afterwards found it in the heart of a wireless friend.